- From: Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 22:17:36 +1100
- To: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
- Cc: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>, Drummond Reed <drummond.reed@cordance.net>, Phil Archer <phil@philarcher.org>
On 06/12/2008, at 10:01 PM, Julian Reschke wrote: > Mark Nottingham wrote: >> ... >> If we disallow inbound links (i.e., take them out of the prose, but >> as Roy says, still allow them in the syntax, for compatibility), >> we'll avoid this confusion and also gain some consistency between >> the serialisations. The only apparent loss is that of inbound >> links, and if I had to characterise the discussion I've seen so >> far, it's that their proponents think that they'd be *nice* to >> have, but I don't see anybody lying down in the road to save >> inbound links; indeed, when we re-added them, it was based on one >> or two people saying as much, IIRC. >> Have I missed something? Otherwise it looks like we're moving >> towards taking 'rev' out (but still allowing it as a link-extension >> syntactically). Note that we're still going to update to say that >> rel links are resource->resource. >> ... > > So how would that work precisely? > > If "rev" is taken out, the presence of a "rel" parameter becomes > mandatory, right? > > In that case, "rev" can not be introduced as an extension anymore -- > either headers using "rev" would need to *also* contain a "rel" > value to stay valid (breaking the intended semantics), or would need > to be invalid in that they do not contain the "rel" parameter. ... or rel would need to no longer be required. In 2068, neither rel nor rev was required... > So it seems that "rev" can not be introduced as an *extension* at a > later point, it would be a major change of the specification. > > If "rev" is to be taken out, the spec should state that the > semantics of links without "rel" is undefined, and that future > specifications can change that. Yes, I think that's roughly where we're at. > That being said, I think the semantics of "rev" are clear enough; so > I would recommend keeping it but maybe to add language discouraging > its use for now. Hmm. Defining it but discouraging its use? To be clear -- I don't have strong feelings one way or another. However, I do think that rev is one of the more tentative parts of the spec as it sits. Cheers, -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
Received on Saturday, 6 December 2008 11:18:18 UTC